Nearly all applied research on arts activity has examined phenomena in metropolitan areas. Findings from this past research confirm an arts specialization in a limited number of cities. This paper finds a similar pattern in nonmetropolitan areas, where a limited number of counties maintain or...

Creative class theory posits that creative people are attracted to places most conducive to creative activity. The association of the share of employment in the arts with various indicators of economic dynamism provides plausible support for this conjecture. We explicitly test this conjecture by...